The Early Church and Science

Before we complete our survey of the teachings of the early
church on the early chapters of Genesis it is necessary to discuss a number of
general scientific issues that often crop up. One of the most frequent
criticisms of the church fathers is made about their anti-intellectualism.
Tertullian is the church father who more than any other has been taken to
epitomise this view.

Tertullian wrote:

For philosophy is the material of
the worlds wisdom, the rash interpreter of the nature and dispensation of
God. Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy What indeed
has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church?
What have heretics to do with Christians? Our instruction comes from the porch
of Solomon, who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity
of heart. Away with all attempts to produce a Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic
Christianity! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no
inquisition after receiving the gospel! When we believe, we desire no further
belief. For this is our first article of faith, that there is nothing which we
ought to believe besides.(1)

Three facts that lie behind Tertullians rhetoric that
are seldom considered:

Greek philosophy was an amalgam of rival
world-views, based on premises that are very different from the biblical
revelation.(2) Their failure to establish any means of
accountability to allow the resolution of disputes was already appreciated by
Diodorus (c.90-21 BC), Galen (c.130-200 AD) and Claudius Ptolemy (2nd cent. AD)
(and other leading thinkers of the 2nd century.(3)

Tertullian believed that heresies are themselves
instigated by philosophy,(4) Plato and Aristotle being
responsible for Valentinian Gnosticism.(5) David Lindberg
argues that what he therefore opposed was not philosophy generally, but
heresy or the philosophy that gave rise to it.(6)

3. ) Tertullian himself made use of philosophical
(particularly Stoic) ideas in his writings.(7) He agreed with
Plato on the matter of the immortality of the soul.(8) He even
claimed (as Philo and Justin Martyr had before him) that the philosophers
borrowed from the Jewish Scriptures.(9) Like all writers, he
assumed that he was able to write theology without incorporating his own
presuppositions.(10)

The statement cited above must be viewed in the context of
his other works:

Elsewhere Tertullian does not
always speak in such robust terms of an unbridgeable chasm separating Athens
and Jerusalem. He was as well educated as anyone of his time: a competent
lawyer, able to publish his writings in both Latin and Greek with equal
facility, acquainted with the current arguments of the Platonic, Stoic and
Aristotelian schools and also possessing some knowledge of medicine.(11)

Finally, Tertullians argument I believe it
because it is absurd(12) has been shown to be a
misquotation, but more importantly it is an example of a standard Aristotelian
argumentative form. Put simply what Tertullian is actually saying is that

...the more improbable an event,
the less likely is anyone to believe, without compelling evidence, that it has
occurred; therefore, the very improbability of an alleged event, such as
Christs resurrection, is evidence in its favour. Thus far from seeking
the abolition of reason, Tertullian must be seen as appropriating Aristotelian
rational techniques and putting them to apologetic use.(13)

Indeed, in his Apology he demonstrated his
familiarity with at least thirty literary authorities, which he probably had
read first hand, rather than by referring to a handbook of quotations.(14)

The modern idea that science and religion are contradictory
has its origins in the work of John William Draper (1811-1882), especially his
History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, published in
1874.(15) A participant in the debates in the British
Association and a witness of the confrontation between Thomas Huxley and Bishop
Samuel Wilberforce, Draper attempted to read that debate and his own
evolutionary presuppositions back into history. Drapers revisionist
interpretation was followed by that of Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918) who
produced a two volume work on the same theme.(16) White
pictured the Greek philosophers as forerunners of evolutionary theory,(17) an argument which has been repeated many times since by
both evolutionists(18) and creationists.(19) He popularised the idea that Christianity and science have
been locked in conflict since the dawn of civilisation, claiming that the rise
of Christianity was responsible for the demise of Greek science.(20)

Contrary to the views of White and his followers, most the
science practised by ancient Greeks has little in common with what
we would call science today. It was not based on deductive reasoning, but on
guesswork and often on alleged revelations from the gods.(21) In fact

...there was nothing in antiquity
corresponding to modern science as a whole or to such branches of modern
science as physics, chemistry, geology, zoology, and psychology. The subject
matters of these modern disciplines all belonged to natural philosophy and thus
to the larger philosophical enterprise.(22)

So while the Greek scientific theories concerning origins
were a step forward from the myths they replaced, there is a vast gulf between
them and modern science. Robert M. Grant,(23) David C.
Lindberg(24) and D.S. Wallace-Hadrill(25)
all provide a more balanced view of the early churchs treatment of
scientific matters. The situation is not a simple as the followers of Draper
and White would have us believe. Several points should concerning the early
church fathers attitude to the physical world:

The early church writers were not scientists in the
sense that the term could be used of Aristotle, Theophrastus or Galen.(26)

The early church fathers differed greatly in their
attitude to Greek philosophy and science.(27) Some (such as
Tatian) rejected the study of nature completely when it descended to the level
of unverifiable speculation(28) or when it became trivial and
irrelevant.(29) However, that did not prevent them recounting
popular fables as fact.(30) Others (such as Basil of
Caesarea) sought to incorporate knowledge from the natural world with biblical
revelation.

Christians of the Neoplatonist school (Clement of
Alexandria and Origen) downplayed the value of science, because it related only
to the physical world and not to higher realm of the spirit.(31)

Almost all of the fathers drew examples from the science
of their day in their preaching and teaching.(32) Following
the principle of Psalm 19:1 that The heavens declare the glory of
God... each looked on the natural world as a vast repository of
illustrations and examples.(33) Their goal was to communicate
the faith, not to teach science, but science could be used as a tool to teach
the faith.

None of the fathers saw contemporary science as a threat
to the faith.(34) They felt free to reject what they thought was false
teaching.(35)

The church fathers references to nature were
derived from accepted thinking and folklore of their day.(36)
The accuracy of their statements had more to do with their sources than the
individual writers spirituality or quality of biblical exegesis.

It was the doctrine of creation as the work of God that
guaranteed that the understanding of the natural world would remain of some, if
only of minor, importance to Christian theology.(37)

From the above it is clear that is an oversimplification to
blame the church for the decline of Greek science. The evidence is that the
decline was due to variety of causes, including Neoplatonism with its emphasis
on the unseen world.(38) Scientific pursuits were the domain
of those who could afford to spend time in speculation,(39)
offering little practical benefit to society as a whole. As the Roman empire
declined economically the number of people who could afford to pursue
scientific endeavours shrank.(40) Greek science failed
because it ceased to meet the psychological needs of the majority: a vacuum
that Christianity filled.(41) Seen as part of a range of
causes for the demise of Greek science it is less easy to make sweeping
accusations. It could even be argued that Christianity did more for the study
of nature than the prevailing Platonic philosophy.(42)

The vast majority of the church fathers accepted without
question the commonly accepted belief that the world was spherical in shape
which had been maintained by the Greeks since the fourth century BC.(43) Basil of Caesarea wrote that the shape of the earth was of
no great importance compared with other things that the Scriptures are clear
about.(44) Even if such matters were of no importance to him,
he seems to have accepted the generally held view that the universe consisted
of a series of concentric circles, which the spherical earth lying at the
centre.(45)

Only Lactantius explicitly rejected sphericity, although
there is some indirect evidence from later writers that Theodore of Mopseustia
(c. 350 - 430) and Diodore of Tarsus (d. 394) may also have done so.(46) The surviving works of Lactantius have played an important
part in the development of what J.B. Russell calls the flat error -
the false idea that the early and mediaeval church taught that the earth is
flat.(47) The reason for this was because he linked the a
rejection of belief in antipodes (the existence of a country on the
other side of the world) with the shape of the earth.(48) The
question of the existence of the antipodes(49) had
posed a problem for all Christian theologians. Russell, who has researched the
flat error in some detail, explains:

Christian doctrine affirmed that
all humans must be of one origin, descended from Adam and Eve and redeemable by
Christ, the Second Adam. The Bible was silent as to whether
antipodeans existed, but natural philosophy had demonstrated that if they did,
they could have no connection with the known part of the globe, either because
the sea was too wide to sail across or because the equatorial zones were too
hot to sail through. There could be no genetic connection between the
antipodeans and us. Therefore any alleged antipodeans could not be descended
from Adam and therefore could not exist.(50)

Clement of Rome alluded to the antipodes when he wrote:
The ocean - impassable by men - and the world beyond it are directed by
the same ordinances of the Master.(51) He clearly
believed that even though it was impossible to reach the antipodes from where
he lived the people shared a common Lord.(52) Lactantius,
however, ridiculed the idea of people living on the other side of the earth and
(perhaps reacting against his pagan background) went on to reject the idea that
the earth could be spherical. In a famous passage in Divine Institutes
he asks:

...is there any who are so
senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than
their heads? or that the things which with us are in a recumbent position, with
them hang in an inverted direction? that the crops and trees grow downwards?
that the rains, and snow, and hail fall upwards to the earth?(53)

On the existence of the antipodes Augustine was also
sceptical, but his doubts did not lead him to the extreme of dismissing the
idea of a spherical earth. Indeed, he specifically referred to it as a globe,(54) but found no evidence in Scripture for a race of men living
on the other side of the world. The journey to that region, even if there is
land there, would prove to be too great.(55) Russell
demonstrates convincingly that although much has been made of Lactantius
statements, he was virtually ignored by later writers and suspected of heresy
in regards to his Christology. It was only his excellent Latin
style that caused interest in his to be revived during the Renaissance.(56)

...it is not wonderful that at the
present time a snake should be found out of a dead man, growing out of the
marrow of his back,(57) and that a bee should spring from an
ox,(58) and a wasp from a horse,(59) and a
beetle from an ass, and, generally, worms from the most of bodies.(60)

He even appears to suggest that the first men might have
been spontaneously generated, citing the beliefs of the Greeks as support for
his view. However, the reference is unclear and his acceptance of the view
appears to have been tentative.(61)

As far as we can tell, the majority of the people of the
ancient world believed in spontaneous generation, including some of the early
church fathers (to a limited degree). See Table 7.1.
However, the assumption that they were therefore evolutionists in the modern
sense is unwarranted.(62) Rather, it is the result of reading
back todays popular idea of a scientist as a totally objective white-coated
empiricist into the ancient world. Such a person is as much a caricature today
as he or she would have been 2,500 years ago. We have seen how the
fathers derived their scientific views from the works of natural history
of their day, particularly those of Aristotle. Aristotle taught spontaneous
generation, but also believed in the fixity of species and did not conceive of
any development from one species to another during spontaneous generation.(63)

Interestingly Eusebius of Caesarea specifically rejected the
idea of spontaneous generation because he saw it as incompatible with the
Hebrew account of the creation of man by God - an event which did not take
place by chance.(64)

References

(3) Christopher B. Kaiser,
Creation & The History of Science. (London: Marshall Pickering,
1991), 4. Kaiser continues: The long-range welfare of natural science
depended on the development of an ecumenical community of scholars dedicated to
the pursuit of truth. This ideal was appreciated by the leading thinkers of
antiquity, but the needed substructure was not available the ecumenical
foundation of modern science was to be provided by the monastic movement of the
Middle Ages, a movement based on the very discipline that was advocated by
Irenaeus and Tertullian. Such are the ironies of history. See further
34-51.

(14) T. D. Barnes,
Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1971), 196-199. The full list of authorities used in Tertullians Apology
is: Pliny the Younger, Herodotus, Ctesias, Diodorus and Thallus, Cassius
Severus and Cornelius Nepos, Pythagoras and Plato, Pindar, the Cynics Diogenes
and Varro, Cornelius Tacitus, Aristeas, Manetho the Egyptian, Berossus the
Chaldean, Hiram of Tyre, Ptolemy of Mende, Menander of Ephesus, Demetrius of
Phalerum, King Juba of Mauretania, Apion and his adversary Josephus, the stoics
Zeno and Cleanthes, Plato again and again, Epicurus, Hostilius, Laberius and
Lentulus (three writers of mimes), Cicero and Seneca, Pyrrhon and
Callincus.

(15) John W. Draper, The
History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. (London: Henry S.
King & Co., 1875). Russell, Jeffrey Burton Inventing the Flat Earth:
Columbus and Modern Historians. (New York: Praeger, 1991), 41:
Drapers Conflict was the best selling volume of the
International Scientific Series; in the United States it had fifty printings in
fifty years, in the United Kingdom twenty-one in fifteen years; and it was
translated worldwide. Italics in original.

(16) Andrew Dickson White,
A History of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom, 2
Vols. (London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd., 1896).

(17) White, Warfare,
Vol. 1, 14: Striking, also, was the effect of this idea [of Evolution] as
rewrought by the early Ionian Philosophers, to whom it was probably transmitted
from the Chaldeans through the Phoenicians. In the minds of Ionians like
Anaximander and Anaximenes it is most clearly developed: the first of these
conceiving of the visible universe as the result of processes of evolution and
the latter pressing further the same mode of reasoning., and dwelling on
agencies in cosmic development recognised in modern science. This general idea
of evolution in Nature thus took strong hold upon Greek thought and was
developed in many ways, some ingenious, some perverse. Plato, indeed, withstood
it; but Aristotle sometimes developed it in a manner which reminds us of modern
views.

(18) Henry Fairfield
Osborn, From The Greeks to Darwin: An Outline of the Development of the
Evolution Idea. (London: Charles Scribners Sons, 1927); Sir William
Cecil Dampier, A History of Science and its Relations With Philosophy and
Religion. (Cambridge: CUP, 1966); Ernest L. Abel, Ancient Views on the
Origins of Life. (Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 1973).

(27) Grant, Miracle,
90: On the one hand, we find militant attacks upon science and
philosophy, usually based on Academic scepticism and ringing no changes on the
old themes. On the other hand, we find enthusiastic support for science which
usually reflects stoic philosophy.

(40) Lindberg, 33:
The study of nature held a very precarious position in ancient societies;
with the exception of medicine and a little astronomy, it served no practical
function and was rarely seen as a socially useful activity.

(48) Pliny the Elder (23-79
AD) notes that it was the common belief in his day that the world was a globe.
Pliny, Natural History 2.2.5; 2.65.161-166; trans. H. Rackham,
LCL, Vol. 1. (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1988), 173,
297-301.

(49) Russell,
Inventing, 20: ...land on the opposite side of the planet or, more
commonly, human inhabitants of lands on the other side of the
planet.

(57) Pliny the Elder,
Natural History 10.86: We have it from many authorities that a
snake may be born from the spinal marrow of a human being.; Ovid,
Metamorphoses 25 (385-390); Aelian, CA, 1.51 (Trans. A.L.
Scholfield, LCL, Vol. 1. [London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1971],
71)